Healing of Sparks
by Autobot Trapjaw
Summary: Marshall sees the ghost of Trapjaw when she returns from the Well.


Healing of Sparks

_I remember being new. My armor plating was shiny. It had no scratches. It didn't have dents, either. Sometimes it squeaked from being somewhat stiff – the same way a new uniform feels the first few times you wear it. It had been perfectly fit to my frame.  
I remember being new. It's hard. I know a mech who felt the harshness of being new when everyone else was older. He had the hardest time finding a place where he belonged among the Autobots. The circumstances of how he came to be didn't exactly appeal to the others, considering that the one who built him, who spent countless hours of night repairing and remodeling what used to be an enemy frame, fell in battle. She had restored it after salvaging it from another battlefield. Once it was almost finished, the only thing it lacked was a spark of its own.  
That wasn't what made the situation uncomfortable, though. Soon after her project had come to a halt, she had fallen, but only because she wanted to. She had a disease that would have turned her into a walking pile of spare parts. She never wanted to last that long, but she wanted her project, her 'child', to live. Shock and disbelief quickly spread throughout the base with the news of her passing. Nobody knew that she had intentionally sacrificed herself to spare them the misery of watching her become a vegetable. _

_Her spark was taken from her frame, along with some of her other internals, but as the mech who had helped put the project together, Ratchet saw to it that his former colleague's creation saw life for itself. He had watched her slave over it for weeks. The frame had sat untouched since she died. He looked from the frame to the glass cylinder on his desk. If anyone else knew what he was about to do… He didn't care. It was for her. He grabbed the blue-glowing cylinder; the spark this frame desperately needed._

"_Please… accept the spark…."_

_Obviously, it worked. If it hadn't, I wouldn't be here today. My frame would be sitting in the same spot it did when it lacked a spark – if it wouldn't have been scrapped. Yep, the mech I said I knew – that mech is me. And I have the spark of my creator in my chest._

* * *

"GUYS! GUYS! I FINALLY GOT IT!" Marshall screamed, running into the rec room. In his servo was a small, thin, plastic box. The front lacked color, and all that was on it was a cabin-like house. Sideswipe looked up from the pool table.

"Let me guess, you got that album that album you've been greatly anticipating?"

"YES! SHADOW PICKED IT UP FOR ME EARLIER TODAY!" Marshall replied, jumping up and down in excitement.

"You listen to it yet?"

Marshall nodded.

"Give me a jam to listen to, then, Marsh," Jazz said, leaning on his pool stick with a smirk. Marshall matched Jazz's smirk before he picked a song.

"_I'm friends with the monster that's under my bed - get along with the voices inside of my head. You're trying to save me, stop holdin' your breath… and you think I'm crazy, yeah, you think I'm crazy," _a woman's voice sang. Marshall tapped his stabilizing servo and bobbed his helm with the beat of the song.

"_I wanted the fame, but not the cover of Newsweek. Oh well, guess beggars can't be choosey. Wanted to receive attention for my music. Wanted to be left alone in public - excuse me for wanting my cake, and eat it too, and wanting it both ways,"_ a male voice – Eminem's – spoke, which was followed by Marshall reciting the next part.

"Fame made me a balloon cause my ego inflated when I blew, see, but it was confusing, cause all I wanted to do's be the Bruce Lee of loose leaf."

Jazz and Sideswipe smirked at Marshall. They both knew he had Trapjaw's spark – after a year without her, Optimus decided everyone needed to hear the truth. The mech was his bot, even with TJ's spark, but everyone could tell he was 'hers' when the love for Eminem didn't differ between the two of them.

"I like this song. Not bad, Marshall," Sideswipe said. Jazz nodded in agreement.

"Marsh, burn this badaft jam on a disc for me?"

"Anything for you, Jazz," Marshall replied with a nod.

"Wanna play some pool with us?"

"Uh, sure… I guess. I don't really know how to play, but I'll give it a shot.

* * *

Trapjaw rubbed her optics. She was in the Well last night with all the others, but for some reason, she found herself back home. She knew she was long since dead, but if she was, why wasn't in the Well now?

Her confusion was replaced with curiosity as soon as her audios caught the sound of music.

"_I'm friends with the monster that's under my bed…"_

"Is that… Rihanna?" she asked herself out loud before she got up. It was then that she really noticed that she was in the training room. Trapjaw looked around the room; the walls were still gun-metal grey, the gun case was still in the south-east corner, and apparently, Ironhide had built a gun case of crystal for her sniper rifle.

"My gun… Why isn't Wil using my gun?" She looked up at it with disappointment. The gun was supposed to go to Wildfire…

* * *

Marshall was on a roll. Every shot he made was a ball in the pocket.

"This guy's kicking our afts, Jazz," Sides said with a worried look on his faceplate.

"Beginner's luck, Sides. Just chill out," Jazz replied as he prepared to take his shot.

"Good luck with that, Jazz. I kick aft, and you kn-." All of a sudden, Marshall felt… sad for some reason, and it began to flood his processor, mixing with his own confusion. His vision began to blur. His servos began to shake. A voice flooded his audios.

"WHY CAN'T I JUST GRAB THE BOX?!"

"What the… What the frag….?" Marshall tried to blink the fuzziness from his optics that began to develop in them. He blinked, and then rubbed them with his servos. The fuzziness grew thicker with each rub.

The pool stick fell to the floor with a clang and clatter, as did Marshall, who fell to his knees.

His vision had gone dark for a few moments. When he regained his vision, it wasn't his own.

It was hers. He could see her servos, hear her voice. He, Marshall, for one brief moment in time, was once again the bot he used to be.

For one brief moment, Marshall was Trapjaw.

"Marshall! Marshall, wake up!"

* * *

Trapjaw tried to grab the case off the wall. Her servos went right through the crystal and the rifle.

"WHY CAN'T I JUST GRAB THE BOX?!" she shouted, staring at the gun case with wide, frustrated optics. Out of nowhere, the case fell to the floor. The crystal didn't break, but it did crack to a great extent. She looked at it in curiosity.

"So this is what being a ghost is like, huh?" she asked herself out loud with a smirk. Using her newly discovered powers, Trapjaw looked at the case again. She put all of her strength into lifting it high off the ground before… **CRASH! ** Out of habit, the femme shielded her faceplate, but there was no point. The crystal shards flew through the air and her body. The rifle clattered to the floor. "Whoa… that was cool."

The crash had echoed throughout the base, catching Ironhide's attention. From down the hall he began running towards the training room. The mech turned into the doorway to the sight of his crystal case in several hundred pieces.

"Wh-what the frag? My crystal… It's broken…" His expression turned from worry to devastation. "Please don't let the rifle be broken…" He said, a quiver in his voice. Pushing the shards of crystal away, Ironhide picked up the dormant weapon, examining every inch of it. Standing in front of him, watching him worry and fret over her rifle, there was Trapjaw. She watched her father worry over one of the last few things he had of his daughter, forever and always lost to him. She watched him as he tried to hold back the tears he had contained from the world for over a year, and she felt horrible.

"How could I have been so… So stupid? Daddy? Daddy, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have left when I did…."

"Trapjaw? Are you still… are you still here?" Ironhide's helm turned after Trapjaw spoke.

"Daddy? Can you hear me? Yes, I'm right here! Right in front of you!" she replied, hoping that it wasn't just a mistake.

"Trapjaw…? If you're here, I just want you to know…" He hesitated, looking down at the shards of crystal. "We all miss you, especially Hot Rod and Wildfire. They're just so lost without you…" The mech sniffled as he swept the pieces into a pile. With the light, they all shined with different shades of blue and red. He sighed. "Why do I even try to convince myself? She's gone, lost…"

Trapjaw's optics grew wide. "I'm… I'm right fragging here – right in front of you, Daddy. I thought you could… you could hear me..." She looked at her servos. The stains from the year before still remained, reminding her that the reality was that she was dead.

* * *

Hot Rod sat in his quarters alone. Life was so strange, so quiet, without his sparkmate. She had died in battle, and ever since then, he had never been the same. The relationship he had with their son had started to die, and both he and Wildfire avoided their quarters whenever possible. They reminded them too much of Trapjaw.

"I wish you were still here, Teej," Hot Rod said, holding her bonding band in his servo. He wiggled it sideways between his thumb and index digit. "We all miss you. The twins, Wil, Ratch, your pop, Shade… me. Everyone misses your jokes, your music, everything. I miss your optics. Wil won't admit it, but I think he misses your pre-recharge hugs. I just wish you were here by side, TJ…" He sniffled. In the background, he had music playing. It was one of his favorite albums that his bonded owned. "You've left a scar on my spark, more of a void, and now I can't even look at your possessions without almost breaking down. I just can't live without you, TJ… I just can't." The ring fell into his palm from his digits, and the mech grasped it tightly before closing his optics and feeling the cool tears slide down his face.

Trapjaw knew she was dead. Her servos had her Energon on them, and her chestplate had the big blowout hole from the shot that killed her. She had watched her sire sweep the bits of his broken spark into a pile, and she knew that no matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to glue the shards of crystal back together. He never was very good at puzzles, nor did he have the patience.

From across the hall, even through all of the deafening silence that lingered in her audios, she recognized a sound so familiar – so comforting – that it was the only thing she needed to hear. That familiar sound of music… She walked across the hall to their quarters and stood in the doorway. What she saw pained her spark, even with it no longer existing in her chest.

Trapjaw watched her bonded play with her band. She wanted so badly to be alive for just one more moment, long enough to be able to explain herself in person. If he knew, he would be angry with her, she knew that much, but she didn't care. It wasn't like it mattered, anyways. Trapjaw was dead after all: nothing but a ghost. She sat next to him, watching him silently weep. The sorrow Hot Rod felt was so strong, so apparent, that TJ forgot she was dead for a moment. She tried to speak to him, to comfort him. It was in her nature to comfort others. "Hot Rod… Hot Rod, it's okay; I'm fine now," she spoke. "Please understand that everythi-"

"Dad? Hey, Dad – Uncle Optimus wan-" Wil's voice caused both Trapjaw's helm and Hot Rod's to turn towards where he stood.

"Wil?" Trapjaw asked, thrilled to see her son. He had grown so much in the year she'd been gone from the picture, and he was becoming quite the handsome mech as well. Hot Rod looked at him with a much different expression. His was one

"What the frag are you doing here, Wildfire? What do you want?" Trapjaw looked at her bonded with an expression of shock.

"Hot Rod! What are you doing? Don't talk to our son like that!"

"Um, Uncle Optimus wanted to talk to you. He asked me to find you; he tried to comm link you, but you cut your connections."

"What does he want?"

"What does it matter what he wants, Hot Rod? Just get up and find out for yourself," Trapjaw said with a stern look on her faceplates.

Wildfire looked nervous as he shrugged. "I-I don't know. He didn't say what."

"Well, next time he needs to find me, tell him to do it himself. I'll be there in a few minutes, understand?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Good. Now get going."

Wil nodded before taking off for Optimus's office in fear. Trapjaw looked at Hot Rod in shock.

"You big fragging aft… I can see you've been doing well with your son," she said, walking over to where the stereo sat. "Being a ghost has its advantages." She looked at the speakers of the stereo, and with her energy, the two of them fell off the shelf and onto the floor with a crash. She crossed her arms in disappointment while she watched her sparkmate jump at the sound.

"Holy frag…"

"That's right; 'Holy frag….'"

* * *

"Marshall!" Bluestreak called from the hallway. "Marshall! Hey, where are you, Marshall?" Marshall had disappeared in the early hours of the morning, and it worried him. He never was gone for very long – the two would eventually run into each other at one point or another around base, but it had been far too long, and there was still no sign of the mech.

"MARSHALL!" Blue shouted at the top of his lungs, calling the M.I.A mech like a dog, before something caught his audios. The pigment in his faceplates faded at the first sentence.

"'_The secret side of me I never let you see. I keep it caged, but I can't control it, so stay away from me. The beast is ugly. I feel the rage, and I just can't hold it. It's scratching on the walls, in the closet, in the halls. It comes awake, and I can't control it; hiding under the bed, in my body, in my head. Why won't somebody come and save me from this? Make it end!_'" Marshall sat in the dark corner of a storage room, his optics shut tightly. He didn't remember why he was here – all he knew was that he was playing pool before he crashed to the floor. Now he was in a closet. Surrounding him were all of Trapjaw's CDs, and in his servos was one in particular…

"Marshall?" Blue asked, creeping closer towards the closet. His friend looked anything but stable, and the fact that he was playing Skillet was not helping, either. He watched as Marshall's servos trembled. "Marshall, put down the Skillet album… I know you've got Trapjaw's spark, but you don't need to go there. It's not pretty," he said, approaching him like a wild beast that would strike at any second. "Please, Marshall…"

"'_I feel it deep within, it's just beneath the skin. I must confess that I feel like a monster. I hate what I've become, the nightmare's just begun. I must confess that I feel like a monster. I, I feel like a monster… I, I feel like a __**monste**__r!'"_ The mech sang as loud as he possibly could. Trapjaw heard him shouting from the rec room and made a dash for the storage room.

At the same time, many others had heard Marshall singing as well. When they had heard Skillet in the past, it was never a good sign. Trapjaw was one of the purest of souls, but there were times where some mechs would take advantage of that purity, and after a while of dealing with their bullscrap, sometimes she would just snap. It was very rare, but when it happened, everyone ran and hid. Trapjaw turned from a compassionate medic to a walking time bomb. A walking time bomb that was VERY sensitive…

Trapjaw walked through the others who had begun to crowd around the door. The ruckus had caught her attention, and at that point, all she needed to do was get away from Hot Rod. He had ticked her off so far off the scale that she just wanted to punch him square in the face. She casually walked through the others to see what everyone was freaking out over - she was beginning to get the hang of the whole ghost thing – when she looked at the mech before her. There was something about him that told her he was the one who had her spark.

"So… you must be my brainchild."

Marshall opened his optics at the unfamiliar voice. His jaw dropped before he screamed. The femme before him he recognized instantly just by her white frame, even with all of the scars and the charred sections that covered her armor. Energon stained the whiteness as well. She looked like she had been through the pits. "HOLY FRAGGIT YOU'RE HERE!"

"Whoa, whoa, relax kid! Relax! Can you actually see me?!" she replied with her servos up in the air. For having her spark, the mech was way more jumpy than she ever was. Then again, she hadn't been confronted by a ghost when she was alive…

"YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!" Marshall screamed back to the femme. He didn't notice the others jump at his voice's volume. The only thing he knew was that a dead femme was trying to have a conversation with him. He tried to scoot away from Trapjaw, but he had already pinned himself into a corner.

As the living watched the scene before them unfold, they watched as Marshall spoke to the air around him. Bluestreak looked at him in fright. "Someone sh-should get Ratchet… I'm gonna go get him."

"Way to be blunt, kid. I realize I'm dead, and as it would seem, you're still very in-sync with my feelings. Nobody but Shade and I listened to Skillet..." Trapjaw spoke cautiously to the mech she had built from almost nothing. She knew it was weird for him to be talking to the dead, but she realized quickly that he could help her. She put her servo on his shoulder.

"W-why are you here, then? You're supposed to be in the Well…" Marshall replied with a quiver in his voice. Trapjaw started to reply when the sound of Ratchet's pedes running down the hall reached her audios.

"Oh, frag it. Look, kid, I'll be back, I promise. Just don't tell anyone you saw me. And relax a little; I'm not gonna hurt you… " she quickly told him, placing her phantom servo on the side of his face with a sympathetic smile before vanishing from his sight.

"Marshall! Marshall, what happened! Look at me, Marshall!" Ratchet shouted in Marshall's face, but the mech was frozen. His optics were unresponsive while Ratchet tried to get his attention.

There was something about her touch that brought numbness to his spark. It didn't hurt, but was the exact opposite; he felt relieved. He closed his optics slowly before falling into stasis. "Okay, somebody help me carry him to Med Bay! I think that he's glitched…"

_Accessing main datahub – visual system data… Visual system data transfer in progress…. Transfer complete._

Ratchet waited patiently while the data loaded on the computer. Marshall's freak out scene had everyone concerned. Now, he needed Marshall's side of the story. The only problem was that he had to steal it from him. The video footage had finally loaded.

"Let's see what you saw, kid…" Ratchet murmured to himself before starting the video. What he saw perplexed him.

There was nobody there besides the ones who had gathered by the doorway. None of them were who he had been speaking to, yet the mech kept carrying on his conversation. It wasn't until the end of the video that something caught his eye.

"What in the name of the AllSpark was that?" Ratchet asked himself, rewinding the footage a few seconds back. There was movement, but of what Ratchet couldn't tell. He knew that something was there… He just knew. He looked to the stasis-induced mech with a solemn expression.

"What did you see, kid? There's no glitch in your system, so you must've seen something very real…"

Trapjaw watched Marshall's chestplate rise and fall as their spark continued to beat from beside her CMO. She missed being able to talk with bots when she wanted to and being heard. There were a lot of things she missed about being alive, but she was very familiar with the reality she had. There was no way that she could ever come back alive…

"Ratchet, if only you could hear me. If you could, I wouldn't have to make him help me fix what was broken, but you can't, so he has to. He's a trooper, though. I can see it… feel it, even." She kept her gaze on her creation even when Ratchet walked through her. "What's his name?"

"Oh, Marshall… if only Trapjaw was here. The two of you would have been great with each other, like any other family."

"Marshall…? Not a bad name…"


End file.
